


What She Never Had (Until Then)

by Marvelous_apparitions



Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Lesbian Character, Making Love, Minor Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 02:01:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7739122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvelous_apparitions/pseuds/Marvelous_apparitions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study of Jillian Holtzmann's life; of her love and sexuality and the beautiful way Erin Gilbert falls, cascades, into it. It's poetry. She swears it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What She Never Had (Until Then)

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be another chapter in "Come Here Often?" but then it took on a poetic form and became special somehow.  
> I really hope you all enjoy this. I promise, the angst and the journey is worth it (and Jillian would think so too).

**What She Never Had (Until Then)**

The first time Jillian Holtzmann puts her hands on a girl, she's in high school. Stacy Green is her only real friend and she invites her over to her pool/house party when her parents are away, and she is sweating as she sips on her disgusting beer, sitting in the corner the whole night because when she does move, she can feel Stacy's eyes on her, trailing down her back past her bikini top and focusing in on her tight, bright red men's board shorts. She stays seated after she notices it. Doesn't know what to do with the sensation of being looked at.   
  
She doesn't even swim, doesn't get her suit wet for half a second, except when somebody maybe splashes her. She doesn't want Stacy, with her gorgeous long brown hair and youthful puppy-dog doe eyes, to be anywhere near her. She just wants her well kept secret to remain tucked away inside, hidden in the walls behind her X-Files posters in her bedroom, tucked away in a drawer with her one (disappointingly disturbing, in a way she cannot yet pinpoint) playboy magazine. By the end of the night, three beers in, she just wants to go home.   
  
But she drove there, in the car she borrowed from her dad (without him knowing...it wasn't as though he woke up much from his drunken stupors, anyway) and she knows she can't go home. As the last handful of her peers leap from the pool and trickle out through the back gate, Stacy gives her a smile as she lifts herself from the edge of the water and comes immediately to hover over her. She takes her by the hand and she leads her upstairs into her shockingly pink and neat and girlish bedroom, and Jillian feels panic setting in as she is pushed onto the frilly bed and then, without warning, Stacy Green, her friend, her secretly harbored and agonized crush of _months_ , she's kissing her. 

Stacy doesn't let Jillian's hands go up past a certain point, doesn't let them brush against her breasts, doesn't let Jillian kiss anywhere but her mouth. When Jillian feels her hands being pushed downward, unceremoniously into her friend's skimpy bathing suit shorts, she gasps into a hot warm mouth, and she feels herself getting so turned on, and for some reason...she hates herself.   
  
Maybe it's the way Stacy stops kissing her when her fingers start moving, or the way a new inch of distance comes between them as they lay down side by side, awkwardly, and Jillian's fingers enter her.  
  
When it's over, after she's sighed real pretty and blushed, arching into Jillian in a way that leaves the blonde hungry, starving for more, something _more_...Stacy gets up, and turns her back on her friend, reaching into her dresser drawer and getting undressed and redressed into a shirt and pajama pants as if Jillian wasn't even there.   
  
Jillian watches her. Jillian makes herself giggle to match Stacy's shy, coy laughter when she admits, "I didn't want my first time to be with a guy...you know? I've heard it hurts. I wanted someone gentle. So I could...learn." 

Jillian doesn't spend too much time dwelling on the fact that she wanted it, she wanted her friend, of course she did...but still. Stacy should have asked. She should have just asked her. Maybe then, it wouldn't have felt so weird.   
  
After that night, they aren't friends anymore. 

* * *

In college, Holtzmann really grows into herself. There's truly no other way to put it. She does up her hair a certain way and takes on a style that sends virtually all men running, and thank god for that. She starts going by Holtz. Holtzmann.   
  
She starts fucking a lot of girls. She likes the sounds they make. She likes the way they taste, the way their hands fist in her hair right before they scream her name. But never her first name.   
Half the time, she doesn't let them know it.   
  
Half the time, okay, all of the time...she tries not to be bothered by the fact that the thought of putting their hands on her naked body - and she never gets that far, is never undressed by these women - it disgusts them. Or scares them. It's always one of the two.  
  
"I'm not a lesbian. You're just really good at ...that. My boyfriend isn't." (She hates that. When she finds out she's been made complicit in their cheating. Knows deep down their boyfriends would find it hot, probably, anyway).  
  
"I...I _can't_. Holtzmann. I'm not supposed to feel this way."

By the time she graduates, her bachelor's, her master's, and then her prized Doctorates in Particle Physics and Engineering... after all of it - she's been the plaything of dozens of women from bars, women from her dorms. From all over campus. At least 27 of them. But it's not like she's counting.   
  
She quietly and painfully falls into and then back out of a distant and desperate sort of love with Dr. Gorin, at least twice within the span of four years.   
She never mentions it, and Dr. Gorin never even knows, as far as she's concerned.   
  
If there's a gay community, she cannot find it. Or rather, it never found her.   
She doesn't have a lot of self worth, regarding the sanctity of her body. Her identity. Her heart.

She doesn't think to look. 

Dr. Gorin shakes her hand firmly at graduation.   
And then that part of her life...it ends. 

* * *

Erin Gilbert is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to her. And Erin is part of the Ghostbusters, too. An integral part of the only family Jillian has ever had. 

The minute Jillian meets Erin in Abby's lab, all she can think to do is flirt. Primarily because Erin is the prettiest woman she's ever seen, even all done up to the neck with lace and a stiff collared shirt. But also...because it's just who she is. It's what she does. 

Even if she doesn't go out anymore, doesn't put her hands on anything not made of metal and scraps and radioactive parts...  
hasn't since her last night at MIT when her roommate and her got really, really drunk...  
Nothing can stop her from trying to get a little attention in the form of a smile, or if she's lucky, a cute little blush. 

It takes about 4 months from the fateful day they save the city, but Erin starts flirting back, tentatively.  
So naturally, Jillian starts panicking. Wondering if she's been found out. The fact that she has a more-than-tiny crush. That she isn't joking. 

One day, Erin calls her by her first name while laughing at one of her snappy comebacks, and Jillian looks at her in shock, almost like she'd forgotten that the redhead had ever heard her name at all.   
  
Erin comes up from behind her while she's in the lab and leans her arm on Jillian's shoulder as she watches her sketch out a new weapon. Erin brings her energy drinks and pringles when she's lucky and healthy snacks like carrots and apple juice and shit with lettuce in it when she isn't. Jillian knows, or is pretty sure she knows, that what Erin really wants is Kevin. She's just waiting to be tagged in as the replacement. But she's falling for Erin, even though she'll never admit it.   
  
She wonders if being a toy without batteries for her would ever be enough.   
(She knows that doesn't matter - and she'd take it no matter what). 

* * *

On February 11th 2017, at 2:12 am, in the lab, while they're both sitting on top of the only small clear section of Jillian's desk, talking about proton packs and portable containment units and the implications of reanimation after death, nothing out of the ordinary for them, by now both used to staying up late and burning the midnight oil, spending time together -

On February 11th 2017 at 2:12, no, 2:13 am

Erin Gilbert kisses her. 

Erin Gilbert kisses her, and puts her hands underneath her shirt, and Erin Gilbert doesn't cringe when Jillian places her hands firmly on her hips and turns her on the desk so that they're facing better. Erin smiles into her mouth when Jillian leans in. 

But Erin pulls back when Jillian's hands move underneath her clothes, when they head below her waist, she says they're moving "too fast."

And something in Jillian's mind just, snaps, not in a violent way, nothing so sudden, and maybe 'snap' isn't the right word, more like the pulling of a thread...but suddenly she gets a feeling that Erin doesn't just want her to fuck her. But what does Erin want, then, if -

if she doesn't want that?

* * *

Erin takes her on a date to turtle pond, and they bring thermoses of hot chocolate and wear warm hats and Jillian wears her hair in a messy, half-down sort of way for the first time in years,  
and Jillian almost cries.

Erin takes her on a lot of dates. A lot.   
  
And Jillian takes her first to the roller rink one Saturday (they both end up pretty bruised) and then to the movies to see a ridiculous cartoon.  
Erin takes her to dinner. And Erin wakes her up with kisses, comes into her room with coffee and muffins for them to share on top of the covers. Its not weird that they haven't slept together. They've been going on dates and sneaking around to be with each other and laugh and kiss in small corners for just a couple of weeks now. Just 17 days.   
Not that she's counting. 

Jillian thinks this is called taking it slow. 

* * *

The night after they tell Abby and Patty that they're together (foolishly assuming the two of them didn't already know),  
Erin takes Jillian up to her bedroom. Erin kisses her deep with tongue and hands buried in her hair and hips pressing against hips and when Erin kneels down to unbutton her tight orange pants while they're still standing there at the foot of the bed,

  
Jillian falls apart.

She stops Erin with her hands and sits on the edge of the bed and pulls Erin into her, all but crushing her against her chest, hugging every emotion she feels straight into her. And then she lets go, and she wipes her eyes, she moves a few inches away from her -

and she looks at Erin like she'll never want to look at anything else ever again. Not even ghosts. Not even fireworks. 

"No one's ever touched me before." She confesses, like it's a simple fact, and not something that's been destroying her from the inside out since she was almost 18 and in Stacy's twin bed.   
  
Erin doesn't looked shocked. Jillian doesn't know if she's shocked, but she doesn't look it, and Erin just asks her, shyly but boldly somehow at the same time, if she's a virgin, and Jillian laughs, and she knows it sounds a little bitter, but she owes herself that, at last.

"There were...girls. Women." she says, pulling Erin's hand into her lap and playing with her fingers as if there were thousands, and she had to count them all, had to map them and cover them in her own fingerprints just to make sure they'd stay hers.  
  
"In college...they liked it. The things I could do for them. But - 

 

yeah. I guess I am. Sort of."

They go to bed naked but just kissing. Jillian holds her breath the entire time - it feels like it, at least, and she knows she must be red, and sweating - as Erin undresses her, piece by piece. Layer by layer.   
  
They lie half on top of each other and they are wrapped in blankets and it feels...nice. It feels like intimacy. Like warmth.

She doesn't feel any urgency, or any anger. She doesn't feel pressured to do anything.

* * *

 She wakes up to lips gently closing around her nipple, and Erin's face is tilted up to watch her eyes open wide. Erin's own eyes go soft when Jillian whimpers.   
  
Erin's head comes up for a kiss and Erin lays completely on top of her and of course, of course Jillian has felt turned on before, of course she'd spent many mornings with her fingers between her legs in the aftermath of a lustful night as if begging her body to finally find release. Always waiting until she was back in her own room or until the woman of the night had left. Always waiting to feel a little less shame.

Jillian Holtzmann has been turned on before. But she's never had a woman turn her on.   
She just never knew the difference,  
until now. 

Erin watches her as she moves her slender, pale and perfect hand between them.   
Erin stares and smiles and flushes when she, after a precious moment of exploration and wetness,  
  
she finds Jillian's clit and Jillian is breathing hard already. And she notices somehow through it all that Erin looks nervous. Erin is moving slow and uncertain fingers around her clit when she admits,   
  
"I've never been with a woman before."

And Jillian can't help but notice - a fleeting thought - that it's fitting. And she can tell by Erin's sweet soft smile that Erin thinks so too.  
  
And Jillian loves her. Jillian loves her. 

She says as much, not in the heat of the moment, it comes out honestly, an easy "I love you" as Erin is sighing and kissing her neck lightly and finding a rhythm with her fingers that is making Jillian vibrate with the delight of it. She thought seeing stars was a myth. A horrible cliche. It isn't. Not really. 

"I love you"  
  
"I love you"

Erin's fingers slip inside of her slowly and her thumb clumsily tries to keep a place on her clit, and Jillian tenderly touches her neck to get her to look up at her, and she reaches up and kisses her, and softly shakes her head, sigh-moan-laughing,  
  
"No - I think -   
Just your fingers on me, on my clit. Faster."

Erin's fingers obediently pull gently out of her, now coated and slick, and move up to rub and find just the right amount of pressure. Quickly, confident now, she moves her hand and sets a pace as freeing as her girlfriend's sexy, new honesty. 

  
She watches Jillian's face and she chases the sounds of Jillian's gasps, and quiet curses, and medium-volume moans that sometimes tilt dizzily up into bright loud whines that Erin wishes she could record in her mind

and replay always. 

Always. 

Jillian's hands grab tight on Erin's shoulders and pull her down to kiss her and Jillian's hips begin moving in slow little circles on their own and her legs are spreading wider and she can't stop her thighs from shaking. It almost hurts, and it's scary - 

And when she comes undone it feels like the first time her walls have ever clenched or her synapses have ever fired and it's the highest she has ever flown and farthest she has ever fallen all at the same time.

It is everything. And it's hers.  
And it's Erin's.

 

This moment belongs to them. 

 

 


End file.
